Amanda Dwyer: Better Than Revenge comedy review – Dark and disturbing material
The winner of this year’s Sir Billy Connolly Spirit Of Glasgow Award is getting payback and sharing distressing stories from her life
It seems fitting that Amanda Dwyer should have followed in the footsteps of Janey Godley to become this year’s winner of the Sir Billy Connolly Spirit Of Glasgow Award. Her conversational, sometimes conspiratorial tone certainly calls to mind much of Godley’s startlingly frank admissions, not to mention the stories of the men who made her early life such a struggle. Having established that practically no one read her prominent content warning before entering the room, Dwyer is at pains to ensure the crowd is settled before she gets to the nub of her concern: she’s seriously fed up of men in power.
Dwyer presents a series of grim personal experiences, the most harrowing of which took place in 2008 and which she describes as the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to her. What began as an act of charity turned into something very bleak indeed. While Dwyer is astute enough to mine dark humour from absurd situations, some of Better Than Revenge is simply too disturbing for laughs, and there are moments when Dwyer asks us to keep some of her stories within this room.
Following one particularly harrowing tale, an audience member fails to initiate a round of applause and this release of tension brings about one of the show’s biggest laughs. There is some light among the dark, notably in Dwyer’s cute observations about her autistic 11-year-old son, who eagerly embraces people’s differences. It may be comedy as therapy, but Dwyer is an interesting voice on the circuit, particularly when she refuses to make the toughest parts of her story any easier to hear.
Amanda Dwyer: Better Than Revenge, The Stand 2, until 30 August, 6pm; picture: Trudy Stade.